Even though the topic of social media ROI may sometimes seem like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole [see previous post], there’s plenty of evidence to suggest we’re inching ever closer to accountability.

What can we conclude about the impact of activities outside our own sites?

What’s vexing for anyone trying to understand the impact of social media is less the tracking than the attribution; how do we fairly assign a value to social media interactions?

This is a much clearer proposition on a website than in social media: if I visit Target.com, it’s safe to assume I have at least some sort of intention to buy, or browse, or do something that could reasonably conclude in a transaction.

But if I’m on Facebook, I’m on Facebook. I’m there to catch up on my friends’ news, chat, send a message, upload a photo; whatever it may be. If I then see some compelling content from Target, I may click over, but it’s not why I came to Facebook in the first place. So web analytics teams who venture into social need to remember that they’re dealing with a very different set of expectations and behaviors on social versus traditional digital channels.

One company that understands this dynamic well is PETCO, which tends to treat Facebook as a venue primarily for social interaction; that is, for people to talk about and post pictures of their pets. They reserve their more overt sales tactics for the website, which is appropriate. If you visit the PETCO Facebook page, you’ll see the occasional call to action, but the timeline is dominated by fluffy, sleepy and generally adorable creatures of all shapes, sizes and species.

We also know that people don’t shop in a linear fashion. We wander in and out of stores, look at websites, put things into and take them out of our shopping carts, and–yes–talk to people who influence our opinions. Some of these conversations may happen online, as with product reviews, but many happen in real life, where no one can hear us (yet).

So how do you fairly define or value a “social” conversion?

Since we’re in the midst of March Madness, it seems fitting to compare Google’s view of social media conversions to field goals and assists.

Last Interaction Social Conversion means that the social content was the last thing the person clicked on before buying (the “field goal”).

Assisted Social Conversion “doesn’t immediately generate a conversion, but the visitor returns later and converts” (the “assist”; think Chris Paul to Blake Griffin).

As in sports, this can become a bit metaphysical when you start to try to attribute precise weightings to actions, but it’s a reasonable way to approach conversion measurement for social media. Here’s what it looks like in report form:

If, like me, you’re thinking ahead to Key Performance Indicator (KPI) development, you’ll want to start benchmarking these metrics (Percentage of Last Interaction Social Conversions/Conversions; or Percentage of Assisted Social Conversions/Conversions) to get a sense of any patterns in the data. While it would take some time (at least a year, in my opinion, given seasonality) to get a true benchmark, it’s a worthwhile learning opportunity.

The other reports available in this release focus on more granular data; you can see examples of them on the Google blog today:

Conversions Report. Which goals are being impacted by social media

Social Sources. How visitors from different sources behave

Social Plugins. Which content is most sharable

Activity Stream. What’s happening outside the website

The weakness in Google’s social analytics strategy continues to be integration; given who Google is, it’s no surprise that the biggest players would be wary of participating in their Analytics Social Data Hub. The partner list is notably sparse, and is weighted toward smaller and lesser-known platforms, which presumably have more to gain and less to lose from opening their APIs to Google.

But while the lack of partners in the Social Data Hub is concerning, to overfocus on it obscures an important contribution, which is to challenge and advance our collective thinking about how to measure the business impact of social media. These reports represent a valuable step in that direction, and one which–whether or not you use Google Analytics–is relevant for anyone trying to assess the revenue impact of and develop meaningful KPIs for social media.

Implications for Brands

If you use Google Analytics, use these new reports as a way to benchmark social media and start to better understand:

What leads to “Last Interaction” versus “Assisted” conversions

How content and channels affect conversion

Start building KPIs from these measurements and socializing them within your organization. Be sure to set appropriate expectations, given that this is a new set of data.

Look closely at the resource impact that interpreting these new metrics has on your organization. Depending on how you are staffed, this could be minimal to significant.

If you’re not a Google Analytics user, it’s still helpful to take a look at these reports to familiarize yourself with them and determine whether you have access to this type of data from your social analytics solutions.

5 Responses to Google Addresses Revenue Impact of Social Media with New Social Reports

Great post, Susan. Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long to happen. It seems as simple as bundling referral data + conversion data, and just calling out if traffic is coming from Facebook, Twitter, wherever. Unless, is there something big I’m missing?

Conversion tracking and social attribution are important metrics to look at, but to be powerful they need to be actionable. Not only is it what a “share” lead to (a purchase, a sign up, a download and how much that was worth to your business) or whether or not it was a last interaction social conversion vs. an assisted social conversion, but who was sharing, how were they sharing, and where were they sharing. When I look at social, I think it can touch on 3 different areas of business:
1)Brand Awareness
2)Attraction of high quality consumers
3)Revenue

The future of social conversion tracking is setting individual KPI’s against these three different parts of your business and then capturing actionable data and leveraging it against them (such as product “y” is shared the most on Facebook by “x” year old women on Tuesday in California on average drives “z” conversions). The direction this takes us is towards the next evolution of social, CRM.

A great post, Susan! Google have certainly been the ‘elephant in the room’ when it comes to measurement for some time and this seem like a fairly straight-forward addition to the Analytics platform. With their knowledge of search I wonder what might be their next move? Possibly boosting the level and breadth of their analytics offering (at a premium price)? It would also be interesting to see if they get into ‘commoditization’ of media, adding aggregation and archiving which many of the third party vendors charge so much for.